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Sport, Media and Visual Culture • 149

Nearby, a reproduction of three large ticket stubs refers to ongoing discourses about
increasing ticket prices: 1992 (£8), 1994 (£12) and 1998 (£20). These images, texts
and artefacts link the exhibit to social issues emerging from the sensibilities and ex-
periences of the working-class spectator who has traditionally been associated with
British football.
The exhibits ‘The Big Picture’ and ‘A Fan’s Life’ allow the visitor to immerse
himself or herself in a range of visual, aural and tactile images, objects and sounds
associated with football’s history. The lack of labelling and organisation encourage
the visitor to supply his or her own interpretations of the significance of images

and objects on display. The story of the fan and the images portrayed in ‘The Big
Picture’ refer to football’s political and social history in particular ways. Some nar-
ratives, themes and perspectives are emphasised, while other potential issues, such
as racism, sexism and homophobia, are present but peripheral. Some aspects of some
fans’ lives remain unaddressed. It is, therefore, possible to gain a sense of the politi-
cal sensibilities underpinning the museum’s choice of ‘narrative’ and the presence
of an imagined fan or visitor. The National Football Museum occupies a particular
space within mediated culture, using particular forms of apparatuses and techniques
to relate the story of football to its visitors.

The Spectacle of Sport in the Space of the Stadium

The spaces in which sport takes place are designed for people to inhabit in particular
ways—to enter and exit at designated points, to occupy numbered seating and to
observe certain standards of behaviour. Nevertheless, sports stadia are fi lled with
sensory stimuli in the form of signs, directions, posters, advertisements, television
screens, scoreboards, food stands, team colours and logo-laden clothing on spec-
tators, stewards and athletes. The copious channels of communication combine to
create a complex affective event, evoking sometimes unpredictable emotions, behav-
iours and meanings. In his discussion of the artist Julie Mehretu’s paintings of stadia
and spectacles, Chua (2007: 10) observed that space often fails to behave in the way
it is designed: ‘there is always someone walking the wrong way down the corridor,
always a disturbance on the playing fields, always a disaster impeding the smooth

flow of traffic’. Chua (2007) suggested that there is a sensual excess that is produced

in the spatial forms of modernity. Chua argued that Mehretu’s paintings attempt to
capture the way stadia are composed of sediments of meaning from architectures of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Imperial relations were encoded into modern-
ist architecture, for example, the colonial railway system in India had toilets marked
for ‘gentlemen’ and ‘Indians’ (Chua 2007: 11). Residues of such meanings are part
of the experience of contemporary architectural spaces. For Chua, Mehretu’s art
draws attention to the importance of sport architecture in the construction of the